


sang simple tunes (the whole night through)

by rileys



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Rock Band, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-18
Updated: 2013-03-18
Packaged: 2017-12-05 17:12:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/725782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rileys/pseuds/rileys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nick doesn’t like getting sentimental; he’s not used to noticing these things about someone, and he’s not used to the closeness, or the weird fondness he has for Phil’s calluses and Phil’s dorky plaid shirts and how Phil’s latest hairdo makes him look like a lost John Darnielle impersonator when he’s got a guitar across his lap.</p>
            </blockquote>





	sang simple tunes (the whole night through)

**Author's Note:**

> a thing! an AU thing.
> 
> may do more with it eventually? maybe? maybe.
> 
> **warnings:** implied backstory violence (consider it an AU parallel to The Thing That Happened in Avengers), mentions of hospital stays, unspecified health problems.
> 
> (also, some mostly affectionate teasing at the expense of Ben Gibbard.)

In retrospect, suggesting they meet up for “band practice” may have been too optimistic.  
  
“No,” Rhodey says resolutely, rubbing at his eyes at Phil’s suggestion. “Absolutely no Death Cab.” Pepper breathes in to suggest something, but Rhodey beats her to it—“And no Postal Service, either.”  
  
“Total moratorium on Ben Gibbard,” Maria says from the floor of the garage, lazily twirling a drumstick.  
  
“It’s settled,” says Nick. He waves his hand as if to push away the entire idea. “All of those are out.” Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Pepper and Phil exchange a conspiratory look, which is all kinds of bad news. “Hey, Other Two. If you want to go play open mic at South Market Coffee, fine. But I am _not_  singing that nonsense.”  
  
Nick picks up his pencil from the dusty garage floor, then writes POSTAL SERVICE and DEATH CAB and BEN FUCKING GIBBARD under the “No” column in his notebook. Phil’s shadow wanders over the page as he leans in over Nick’s shoulder from the kitchen chair he borrowed.  
  
“Decemberists?” Phil asks with a grin.  
  
Clearly he’s just in a mood to fuck with Nick, now.  
  
And because they’ve got this down to a science, Nick ignores Phil for his notebook and replies: “Nope.”  
  
Nick can hear the grin when Phil starts up again: “Bon Iver?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Mumford and Sons?”  
  
“I hate you.”  
  
“Bombay Bicycle Club?”  
  
“You made that one up,” Nick mutters, tipping his head backward to look up at him. Phil, his face perfectly innocent, leans back on the chair and scrolls through his mp3 player without a word.  
  
“What do we even have that we agree on so far?” Rhodey asks, idly plucking a string and turning a tuning peg with a look of distaste.  
  
“MuteMath,” Pepper says. “And... The National, I think?”  
  
“Every band that ever had ‘Joy Division-esque’ in the reviews, I think,” Maria adds.  
  
“Also,” Phil says, “Even you like Blind Pilot, Nick.”  
  
“I can and will move them to the ‘no’ column just to spite you,” Nick warns, which is when Rhodey’s folding chair creaks sharply as he stands up, sighing like a weary chaperone.  
  
“How about this,” Rhodey says, looking around the garage at the rest of them. “Everyone make a list, bring it in. Whatever crosses over enough people’s lists, we’ll take those artists and pick songs to cover. Okay?”  
  
It’s all still and silent for a long moment, but gradually, Phil and Pepper start nodding along, and Maria shrugs her shoulders against the floor agreeably.  
  
“Yeah,” Nick says, joining the nods. He tears the page out of his notebook and crumples it, balling it up between his palms. “Better than hashing it out here.”  
  
“Good.” Rhodey, looking satisfied, sits and picks up his guitar again. As Nick stands to throw the crumpled page out, he hears Rhodey mutter: “But seriously, no Ben Gibbard.”  
  
Phil, grinning like he’s trying not to lose it, says: “Owl City?”  
  
The paper ball hits Phil square in the forehead, and Phil laughs as it drops into his lap, looking one hundred percent pleased with himself.  
  
  
  
After five more minutes of halfhearted tuning and a few scattered yawns, “band practice” tapers off for the evening.  
  
Jim’s the first one out, heading to night class; he’s picking up some kind of engineering credit that Nick doesn’t even want to think about.  
  
Maria picks herself up off the floor not long after. Pepper dusts off the back of Maria’s old high school band jacket, and they leave together, laughing about some inside joke from the days before undergrad.  
  
Nick is maybe, just slightly jealous of that; most of the people he knew in high school went out of state after graduation, and he’s been too busy to make friends. Even this is work, technically—even after getting to know everyone better over the past few weeks of organizing them together, he’s not sure he could call Rhodey or Pepper or Maria a “friend”, exactly.  
  
He’s only known Phil for about year now, but that’s a lot to think about right now.  
  
Switching gears away from that thought as quickly as he can, Nick turns to the new page and makes five columns on the new notebook page, one for each of them.  
  
Beside him, Nick can hear the crinkling sound of the paper ball unfolding, pulled open, paper scratching softly against the ever-present calluses on Phil’s fingers.  
  
“I probably won’t make a list,” Phil admits. He hunches slightly in the chair, his shadow crossing Nick’s on the garage floor; he’s quieter, missing his energy from before. “I’m only playing bass, so it’s not like it affects me much. I don’t mind running with whatever everyone else wants to play.”  
  
Pretending not to notice the seriousness in Phil’s voice, Nick keeps his eyes on his notebook and replies: “If you don’t care, then quit trolling the decision-making process.”  
  
“I’m done, I’m done,” Phil assures him. “I know you’re serious about this thing.”  
  
There’s a pause, then a shuffle and a soft protest from the wooden chair, and then Phil settles in on the floor next to Nick, the shoulder of his hoodie alarmingly close to Nick’s jacket. Nick focuses on writing his list in his column, deliberately not looking at the way Phil carefully smooths out the paper on the ‘yes’ column, or the way Phil’s thumb lingers over some names.  
  
Nick doesn’t like getting sentimental; he’s not used to noticing these things about someone, and he’s not used to the closeness, or the weird fondness he has for Phil’s calluses and Phil’s dorky plaid shirts and how Phil’s latest hairdo makes him look like a lost John Darnielle impersonator when he’s got a guitar across his lap.  
  
Which brings to mind the embarrassing reminder that _Nick_  is the one who got _Phil_  into the Mountain Goats, not vice versa, and that puts Nick’s forehead in the palm of his hand with a miserable noise.  
  
Everything went really fucking weird after Phil.  
  
But it hasn’t all been _bad_ weird, which is how Nick winds up slumping over onto Phil’s empty lap, sighing heavily as Phil shuffles around so his knees aren’t digging into Nick’s back.  
  
“Bombay fucking Bicycle Club,” Nick says accusingly, glaring up at Phil’s only slightly apologetic face.  
  
“I swear they exist,” Phil says, even with the corner of his mouth quirking up. “Now I’m kind of tempted to make up bands just to mess with you, though.”  
  
“Dickwad,” mutters Nick, but then he’s smirking back.  
  
And that’s when Phil’s smile goes all warm, eyes half-shut behind his dorky guitarist bangs as he laughs soft and quiet in the silence of the garage, and Nick leans up out of Phil’s lap as quickly as he fell in.  
  
“What’s...?” Phil starts, then trails off when Nick’s fingers thread between the buttons on his shirt, half holding him still and half pulling him closer, _all_  assuring Phil of his general intent. “Oh,” Phil says then, grinning coolly even while his heart pounds under the brush of Nick’s fingers, barely touching the warmth of his skin.  
  
There are reasons for “barely”, for this only being the third time Nick’s moved to kiss him, for the slight flare of Nick’s nerves at feeling his heart rate—for the places in the ‘yes’ column they agree on, and even some of the ‘no’s.  
  
There will be plenty of time later to think about scar tissue, and about Phil’s scrawny silhouette jumping into a bar fight Nick didn’t start, and about the nervously-lettered, mortifyingly sentimental mixtape Nick brought to play in the hospital’s worn out tape deck.  
  
Nick can still remember sitting down in the bedside chair six months ago, watching Phil’s pale, weary-looking features pull into a weak smile, staticky strains of guitar and easy vocals playing through, _as I waited here for you—yeah, when you came in_...  
  
Phil doesn’t look so fragile anymore, but Nick is still careful when he tugs Phil’s shirt a little, wordlessly asking Phil to be the one to lean in this time.  
  
And of course, as has always been Phil’s best (worst) trait, Phil’s got his back when Nick needs him.  
  
Phil’s still laughing a little when his mouth bumps against Nick’s, more a passing caress than a kiss. He opens for Nick’s tongue to stroke over his bottom lip, uncrosses his legs between them to let Nick closer.  
  
“You know,” Phil says, “The garage isn’t mandatory. My roomies are all taking the same block class as Rhodey tonight. Won’t be back until at least ten. Maybe midnight, if they do another study group at the grad center.”  
  
“Thank god for STEM majors,” Nick sighs, already getting to his feet and holding out a hand to help Phil up after him.  
  
Phil smirks, bracing his hands on the borrowed kitchen chair instead, and using it to pick himself up off the garage floor. Nick watches him draw up slow, straight-spined if unsteady on his feet, grinning like it’s no big deal even while he’s still got one hand braced on the back of the chair.  
  
Phil sitting during practice was doctor’s orders—he’s still not supposed to strain himself too much. Nick really isn’t sure Phil’s going to be in good enough condition to get through a whole set anytime soon.

But, Phil must know that better than any of them. 

“You know I’m not replacing you, right?” Nick says, watching Phil cautiously.  
  
“What?” Phil asks, and Nick catches the split-second before Phil remembers to fake a laugh.  
  
“I’m serious,” Nick says. Feeling exposed all of a sudden, he pushes his hands into the pockets of his jeans and lowers his eyes to the half-crumpled paper still in Phil’s free hand. “I want you to make a list, too. I don’t care if it’s all mopey indie guitar shit. You got as much right as any of us to pick what we play.”  
  
Phil doesn’t say anything, but Nick can see his grip tightening on the chair with a slow, reluctant breath in, like he’s about to voice something neither of them wants to hear.  
  
“Look, you’re the first one I asked when I started this whole thing,” Nick says, afraid of what Phil might say if Nick stops talking or looks up. “If you gotta quit because you can’t do it, that’s cool. But as long as you can play, I want you on.”  
  
“Nick,” Phil starts, in the space it takes Nick to breathe.  
  
“If you need it, we’ll get you a chair wherever we end up playing,” Nick goes on. “Carry it in myself if I have to.”  
  
Nick takes a second longer to stare at the floor, unsure about the last bit rolling around in his head—and in the second of indecision, Phil’s already crossed the two feet of space between them and hooked fingers in the front of Nick’s jacket, pulling and leaning and Nick figures it’s already settled.  
  
“Okay,” is what Phil answers, centimeters from Nick’s lips, and then he adds: “Okay, cool, good,” all at once in an outward breath, and he’s muffling it against Nick’s jaw, “okay”, into his mouth, “okay,” and Nick wonders when in the conversation this stopped being about the band at all.  
  
“Yeah, man, we’re okay,” Nick promises, folding his arms up around Phil’s shoulders, holding them together. Nick waits a moment while Phil sighs, his whole body easing with relief all at once, his fingers curling tight in Nick’s shirt at the sides as if he might not notice. “Still my one good eye, y’know that?” Nick murmurs against the corner of Phil’s mouth.  
  
It’s sentimental, and it’s a _lot_ , and Nick holds his breath once he realizes he’s said it, suddenly nervous—but, really, he should know better by now.  
  
“See if you still say that when my whole list is NSYNC songs,” Phil warns, his smile widening against Nick’s as his hands tug on Nick’s shirt to walk him towards the door into the house.  
  
“It better be,” Nick says without missing a beat. “If you repped Backstreet I really would dump you.”  
  
Phil nods gravely, his face perfectly solemn as he replies, “I understand.”  
  
Just like that, the threat of sentimentality lifts—and for an instant Nick can see six months ago in his mind’s eye, when Phil’s yellow-stained hand shook around the cassette tape as he grinned and asked, _so is track 10 just five minutes of goats, or...?_ , and all of Nick’s fear fell away in an instant.  
  
Phil has had his back from the start, in any ways he could; whatever happens from now on, Nick’s long since decided he’ll have Phil’s.  
  
For now, he’s just glad to be led up to Phil’s room, through the door, past an old tape deck on the bedside table—later, he can ask later—and onto the bed.  
  
They’re still easing into this, and Phil’s shirt stays on to keep them from saying too much in one night, but his calluses trace paths on Nick’s skin, and Nick finds a place on Phil’s neck to press his mouth, to feel the thrum of Phil’s pulse under his lips, as sure and steady as ever.  
  
Despite it, Phil still tires fast, still breathes too hard, and Phil saying “I’m good, just a second” turns into Phil closing his eyes to catch his breath, and then inevitably into Phil curled sound asleep against Nick’s chest.  
  
Nick will have to leave before Phil’s roommates get in, he knows. But for the time he has, Nick closes his eyes and listens to Phil’s breathing, and the barely audible sound of the tape deck on the bedside table, playing through a tape Nick remembers all too well.  
  
He lets the tape run its course, all from familiar names Phil’s touch lingered over on a crumpled piece of notebook paper earlier, thoughtful and steady, like something he never wanted to lose.  
  
When the sounds of the mix fade out into the soft hum of the tape rewinding, Nick finally sits up to leave. He knows, he _knows_  it’s not as much of an issue anymore, but he carefully pulls the blanket up over Phil nonetheless, smoothing it down over the slow rise and fall of Phil’s breathing.  
  
With the blanket settled, Nick starts to draw his hand away, drifting over Phil’s shoulder along the way.  
  
And even in the faint light, he can’t help but see the way his touch lingers there, thoughtful and steady.


End file.
